Third Party advertising is something that we in NZ are blissfully ignorant about. Hence the EFB.

The trend in the US described in the Horowitz article is now so much further advanced that the Democratic Party Candidates themselves raise far more money than the Republicans, even before we start to look at the “Third parties”.

So “1984″ hasn’t arrived in the form of PhilBest. “2008″ has arrived, and Schumpeter’s predictions about wealthy people support for Socialism is well and truly coming to pass in the USA. Schumpeter contradicted Karl Marx. Marx said that exploitation of the proletariat would ultimately lead to the overthrow of the bourgeois. Schumpeter said that the proletariat would actually become less and less downtrodden and exploited the longer the engine of Capitalist growth went on, but that Socialism would become increasingly popular with wealthy people, as wealth and wealth creation would become increasingly taken for granted.

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is actually only true in systems where political patronage and oligarchy and high levels of State control serve to lock the poor into poverty. It is not true in the US today or at any time. Inequality might increase, but that is not “the poor getting poorer”. This debate has been carried on at great length on previous threads and I have posted numerous links concerning the improvements in the circumstances of the poorest sectors in the US, especially in the last 30 years and the last 8 years.

Look at the articles of the economist Thomas Sowell in particular.

Should we have a Chapter Ten?

To your book “The Hollow Men”,

To include Williams and Glen,

or is there nothing here,

and we should we just move on again.

I’ve linked to English’s statement via The Hive (fast becoming essential daily reading – http://wellingtonhive.blogspot.com/) on Keeping Stock. I particularly liked English’s references to Labour’s hypocricy in light of the Electoral Finance Act. English says:

“This whole saga reeks of hypocrisy. At the same time as the Prime Minister was pushing through the draconian Electoral Finance Act to supposedly inject more transparency into election financing, Labour appears to have done a deal to conceal support from a major donor who then received a New Year’s Honour.”

Nice one Bill!! Meanwhile, The Hive seems to have christened this “Glenngate” – as if Helen hasn’t got enough “gates” already!!

http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2008/02/glenngate-bill-english-weighs-in.html

Classic!

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0802/S00266.htm

Helen Clark should live up to the same standards of honesty and accountability she expected of Jenny Shipley

… if she is capable of doing so

Brilliant own goal fella. So, any ‘rich’ person who supports Labour is a “rich prick” (your words).

As I said earlier. You guys certainally know how to bite the hand that feeds you.

Well done, keep it up and you might even make it as Labour’s ‘Wally of the Week/Weak” (but you do have a lot of competition).

“Affordable housing” will be another, how does the government think Fletchers got to be as big as it is now – it climbed into bed with the labour government and built state houses for them. Actually I believe he got a knighthood for it too! (what goes around etc)

Left wing parties are prone to bringing in programmes that involve moving a lot of money around (I think its called redistribution), or protecting various sections of the community, and other schemes that have various needs and consequences. The needs are services to make the programme work and the consequences are that there will be some very big money making opportunities that those with money and resources are able to capture.
The health system is a good example. We have more DHB’s than we should ever have, and they all need information systems (when one would do the whole country) and consultants to help the DHB’s and advisors, etc. These are all provided by the various ‘rich pricks’ who own the providers.
And should Clarks “stay at school til youre 18″ ever be put into place, they will need school rooms and more land and more teachers trained – and the ‘Rich pricks’ will be the ones who provide this. (Keys scheme will esentially use existing providers – they are already out there now. All his scheme will really cost is to bring the couple of thousand real problem buggers into a programme of some sort and frankly that will be mostly boot camps because all the others are already training)

we now have our very own cash for honours scandal, with a bit of buying political policy thrown in.

How cute, we’ve finally made it as a nation, I feel so proud.

Of course in the UK, as Rex and others pointed out, this was generally thought of as a bad thing, was investigated by Scotland Yard, and caused bad things to happen to those involved.

In NZ, meh, not so much. Who in the police would dare summon her majesty to be questioned? There is no serious fraud office now, either, so that avenue is gone. Royal Commission, yeah right.

So what is most interesting is that all of the paranoid contentions spread by labour about national and its backers at the last election are now understandable. Because labour was doing every single one of them itself.

policy written offshore – yup
secret foreign bagmen – yup
business buying influence – yup
media kept on a leash of favour and access – yup

plus honours for sale

and, the greatest number of cabinet ministers stood down or sacked for dubious ethics in living memory.

but wait, there’s more! If you look at South Auckland you will see US Democratic get out the vote tactics – might be time to have a good look at the enrollments and see how many of those “voters” really existed.

Must be that new standard of transparency and accountability I recall someone talking about a few years ago?

Yes there is a long term tradition of favour to incumbency – the chairpersons and generally Democrats of the right sort get some corporate money (the others don’t) – the Republicans however are rarely at a funding disadvantage, even when challenging for positions (unless it’s a district they have no hope of winning).

But the other issue is of course the ability to resort to personal wealth …, this reminds one of Greece and buying office (and then using ones own money to fund projects)